Dancing On The Edge sidestepped cliches

TV review: Stephen Poliakoff’s jazz-age drama Dancing On The Edge was a stranger and intoxicating world

Beguiling and curious to the last, Dancing On The Edge (BBC2) yielded some, if not all, of its secrets as the truth behind the murder at the heart of Stephen Poliakoff’s jazz-age drama emerged from the mists of secrecy.

Unrequited love had a major part to play in the tragic turn of events. Ain’t that always the way.

Finally we discovered the fatal flaw in the relationship between millionaire Masterson and brittle romantic Julian, and their bruised relationship almost overpowered the thriller element of the story.

The travails of bandleader Louis Lester, on the run for murder, felt almost secondary to the broken souls who had contrived to place him in his predicament.

So, not perfect then. But Dancing On The Edge deserves much credit for stepping outside the usual run of TV clichés and offering up a strange and intoxicating world, however much you doubted whether 1930s England was really like this.

As the credits led us on, the last notes fading into time, it was like emerging from a dream.

‘It’s really as if we were never there’, said Louis; life’s fleeting nature hanging haunting in the darkness.